US President Donald Trump has praised China’s use of the death penalty for drug smugglers and even appeared to suggest that capital punishment might be a good way to “end the drug problem” in the US.

During a speech on border security at the White House on Friday, Trump said that “tremendous amounts of fentanyl” were being smuggled into the United States, much of which is produced in China. Trump told reporters that during a meeting on trade, he asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to “declare it [fentanyl] a lethal drug and put it on your criminal list.” China’s laws are “much tougher” than US laws, Trump explained, while saying that “70,000 Americans were killed by drugs including meth and heroin, cocaine [and] fentanyl.”

Trump explains that he'd like American drug laws to be more like China's, where drug dealers receive the death penalty. pic.twitter.com/sBo7EAnaN0

The president asserted that Xi agreed to put fentanyl on China's list of deadly drugs and give it a criminal penalty, meaning the death sentence. Trump said the decision was one of the things he was “most excited” about in a trade deal that is currently being negotiated.

Twitter quickly freaked out at what many took for Trump suggesting that the US should be more like China.'

For the first time, Trump wrote in the letter to Vucic what is the key to relations with Pristina: He officially mentioned the mutual recognition

US President congratulated Vucic on Statehood Day

On the occasion of the Statehood Day of the Republic of Serbia, the President of the Republic of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, received congratulations from numerous world officials, stated the Cooperation Service with the media of the President of the Republic.

Serbia celebrates the statehood day: The award ceremony at the Presidency (PHOTO)

In the message of the President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, states:

- Dear Mr. President,

On behalf of the American people, I am pleased to send sincere congratulations on the occasion of the Statehood Day of Serbia.

This year, since the celebration of the hundred anniversary since the Serbian flag fluttered over the White House, we are starting to ensure that the next century of our partnership is in a similar way dedicated to peace, prosperity, and freedom.

The United States remains unwavering in its support to your commitment to deepen regional co-operation, and in particular to your efforts to normalize relations with Kosovo.

While it is up to the sides to achieve agreement they can both support, we consider that mutual recognition should be a central motive of permanent normalization of relations.

Such a historic agreement, with mutual recognition in its essence, would build the way for the goals of Serbia's Eurointegration and economic growth - said President Trump's congratulations.

Foto: Tanjug/AP

President Vucic received congratulations from other European officials, including Turkish President Rexhep Tayyip Erdogan, President of the Republic of France Emmanuel Macron, Federal Republic of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmeier, President of the Republic of Austria Alexander Van der Bellen, President of the Republic of Italy Sergio Mattarella, President of the Swiss Confederation Ueli Maurer, President of the Republic of Bulgaria Rumen Radev, President of the Republic of Greece Prokopis Pavlopoulos, President of the Czech Republic Milos Zeman, President of Hungary János Áder, President of the Republic of Croatia Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic, President of the Republic of Slovenia Borut Pahor, President of the Republic of Finland Sauli Niinistö, Georgia President Salome Zourabichvili, President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins, British Queen Elizabeth II, King of Sweden Karl Gustav XVI, King of Belgium Philippe and Captains Regents od San Marino Mirko Tomassoni and Luca Santolini.

President of the United Nations, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and the UAE Vice President and Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum congratulated President Vucic on the Statehood Day, wishing the citizens of the Republic of Serbia plenty of progress and prosperity under the wise led by President Vucic.

The congratulations were also sent by the Japanese Emperor Akihito, the President of the Republic of India Ram Nath Kovind, the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, the President and the Prime Minister of the Republic of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev and Bakytzhan Sagintayev, as well as the President of the Parliament of that country Nurlan Nigmatulin, the President of the Republic of Armenia Armen Sarkissian, Egypt Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, President of the Democratic People's Republic of Algeria Abdelaziz Bouteflika, President and Prime Minister of the Republic of Iraq Barham Salih and Adil Abd Al-Mahdi, Moroccan King Mohamed VI, President of the Republic of Korea Moon Jae-in, President of the Supreme People's Assembly DNR Korea Kim Jong Nam President of the State Council and Ministers of the Republic of Cuba Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermudes, President of the Republic of South Africa Sir Cyril Ramaphosa, King of Thailand Maha Vajiralongkorn, President of the People's Republic of Bangladesh Abdul Hamid and Australian Governor Peter Cosgrove, the statement said.

'The Environmental Protection Agency reported this week that in 2018 it issued so-called “emergency” approvals to spray sulfoxaflor — an insecticide the agency considers “very highly toxic” to bees — on more than 16 million acres of crops known to attract bees.

Of the 18 states where the approvals were granted for sorghum and cotton crops, 12 have been given the approvals for at least four consecutive years for the same “emergency.”

Last year the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General released a report finding that the agency’s practice of routinely granting “emergency” approval for pesticides across millions of acres does not effectively measure risks to human health or the environment.

Quote

“Spraying 16 million acres of bee-attractive crops with a bee-killing pesticide in a time of global insect decline is beyond the pale, even for the Trump administration,” said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “The EPA is routinely misusing the ‘emergency’ process to get sulfoxaflor approved because it’s too toxic to make it through normal pesticide reviews.”

Under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, the EPA has the authority to approve temporary emergency uses of pesticides, even those not officially approved, if the agency determines it is needed to prevent the spread of an unexpected outbreak of crop-damaging insects, for example. But the provision has been widely abused.

That widespread abuse was chronicled in the Center’s recent report, Poisonous Process: How the EPA’s Chronic Misuse of ‘Emergency’ Pesticide Exemptions Increases Risks to Wildlife. The report concludes that emergency exemptions for sulfoxaflor are essentially a backdoor authorization allowing for its ongoing use on millions of acres of crops where exposure to pollinators through contaminated pollen is high. In fact, the so-called “emergencies” cited are routine and foreseeable occurrences.

Previously, in response to a lawsuit by beekeepers, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the EPA’s original registration of sulfoxaflor in 2015. The EPA’s new 2016 registration for sulfoxaflor — purportedly designed to ensure essentially no exposure to bees — excluded crops like cotton and sorghum that are attractive to bees.'

'Trump could not have become America’s President if he had not won the “vote” of his nation’s second-largest political donor in 2016, casinos-owner Sheldon Adelson.

In publicly recorded donations, as of 25 December 2018, Adelson and his wife donated $82,522,800 to Republican candidates in 2016, and this amount doesn’t include any of the secret money. Of that sum, it’s virtually impossible to find out how much went specifically to Trump’s campaign for President, but, as of 9 May 2017, the Adelsons were publicly recorded as having donated $20.4 million to Trump’s campaign.

Their impact on the Presidential contest was actually much bigger than that, however, because even the Adelsons’ non-Trump-campaign donations went to the Republican Party, and the rest went to Republican pro-Trump candidates, and the rest went to Republican PACS — and, so, a large percentage (if not all) of that approximately $60 million non-Trump-campaign political expenditure by the Adelsons was boosting Trump’s Presidential vote. The second-largest Republican donor in 2016 was the hedge fund manager Paul Singer, at $26,114,653. It was less than a third, 31.6%, as large as the Adelsons’ contribution. Singer is the libertarian who proudly invests in weak entities that have been sucked dry by the aristocracy and who almost always extracts thereby, in the courts, far larger returns-on-investment than do other investors, who have simply settled to take a haircut on their failing high-interest-rate loans to that given weak entity.

Singer hires the rest of his family to run his asset-stripping firm, which is named after his own middle name, “Elliott Advisors,” and he despises any wealthy person who won’t (like he does) fight tooth-and-nail to extract, from any weak entity, everything that can possibly be stripped from it. His Elliott Advisors is called a “vulture fund,” but that’s an insult to vultures, who instead eat corpses. They don’t actually attack and rip apart vulnerable struggling animals, like Singer’s operation does.

'Sixteen US states have filed a joint lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s use of emergency powers to requisition billions of dollars to build his border wall as an unconstitutional violation of separation of powers.

The suit alleges that Trump does not have the constitutional powers to appropriate funds required to build the wall he so desperately wants to construct along the US’ southern border, since Congress – not the president - ultimately has control of spending. The plaintiffs have framed the issue as presidential overreach, and the suit proposes to “protect [plaintiff states’] residents, natural resources, and economic interests from President Donald J. Trump’s flagrant disregard of fundamental separation of powers principles engrained in the United States Constitution.” Contrary to the will of Congress, the President has used the pretext of a manufactured ‘crisis’ of unlawful immigration to declare a national emergency and redirect federal dollars appropriate for drug interdiction, military construction, and law enforcement initiatives toward building a wall on the United States – Mexico border,” the lawsuit, filed in the Federal District Court of San Francisco, reads.

The states’ alliance accuses Trump of steering the nation “toward a constitutional crisis of his own making.” Trump declared his intentions last week to cobble together the funding for his wall out of a $600 million Treasury Department asset forfeiture fund for “law enforcement priorities,” a $2.5 billion military fund for drug interdiction, and a $3.6 billion military construction fund.

California attorney general Xavier Becerra points out that Trump essentially shot himself in the foot while declaring the emergency when he said “I didn’t need to do this, but I’d rather do it much faster.”'

'Michael Flynn was among the White House officials who pushed a potentially unlawful project to share “highly sensitive” nuclear technology with Saudi Arabia despite the objections of ethics and national security officials, Trump administration whistleblowers claim in a new report.

Both Republicans and Democrats have expressed fears that Riyadh could develop nuclear weapons if the US know-how were transferred without legally-required safeguards. The Democratic-led House Oversight Committee opened an investigation on Tuesday into the claims by several unnamed whistleblowers who said they witnessed “abnormal acts” in the White House regarding the multi-billion-dollar proposal to build dozens of nuclear reactors in the Middle East.

The report raises questions about whether some in the White House – which it described as marked by “chaos, dysfunction, and backbiting” – sought to circumvent established national security procedures regarding nuclear power technology. It also comes as Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner is developing a Middle East peace plan that could include economic proposals for Saudi Arabia.

Administration support for the project appears to have continued to the present, with Mr Trump meeting consortium representatives in the Oval Office last week, the committee report said.

'Michael Flynn was among the White House officials who pushed a potentially unlawful project to share “highly sensitive” nuclear technology with Saudi Arabia despite the objections of ethics and national security officials, Trump administration whistleblowers claim in a new report.

Both Republicans and Democrats have expressed fears that Riyadh could develop nuclear weapons if the US know-how were transferred without legally-required safeguards. The Democratic-led House Oversight Committee opened an investigation on Tuesday into the claims by several unnamed whistleblowers who said they witnessed “abnormal acts” in the White House regarding the multi-billion-dollar proposal to build dozens of nuclear reactors in the Middle East.

The report raises questions about whether some in the White House – which it described as marked by “chaos, dysfunction, and backbiting” – sought to circumvent established national security procedures regarding nuclear power technology. It also comes as Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner is developing a Middle East peace plan that could include economic proposals for Saudi Arabia.

Administration support for the project appears to have continued to the present, with Mr Trump meeting consortium representatives in the Oval Office last week, the committee report said.

In 2012, he headed Lilly’s US operations, was also involved in its international and government affairs work. As HHS secretary, he’s serving Big Pharma interests, not US consumers. They’re paying on average double for drugs compared to their counterparts in other Western countries.

Last summer, Azar conceded that drug prices won’t be falling any time soon. He failed to explain they virtually always rise on average annually, 2019 no exception.

In December, Reuters reported that around 30 drug companies said they intend raising prices in early 2019, hikes ranging from about 5 - 10% on average, making many more unaffordable for millions of Americans than already.

The Wall Street Journal noted that hikes in drug prices continue to exceed inflation. Software firm Rx Savings Solutions said the average increase it saw straightaway in the new year was $6.3%. It may be much greater by yearend.

On February 12, a white House statement headlined “No more paying for the rich world’s medicine,” saying:

“Putting American patients first has been core to President Trump’s agenda since day one.” Polar opposite it true.

Last week, he lied saying “(t)he next major priority for me, and for all of us, should be to lower the cost of healthcare and prescription drugs, and to protect patients with preexisting conditions.”

Despite sizable increases in drug prices during his first two years in office, further increases in 2019 so far, the statement further lied claiming “President Trump’s efforts to put patients in control have resulted in the single largest decline in drug prices in 46 years.”

Instead of working to make drug prices more affordable, his agenda is polar opposite. In December, he proposed letting insurers providing Medicare Part D drug coverage no longer protect certain classes of pricy drugs from being higher priced. According to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Seema Verma, under his proposal, Medicare plans could “exclude from their formularies protected class drugs with price increases that are greater than inflation, as well as certain new drug formulations that are not a significant innovation over the original product.”

Drug classes the above applies to are some of the most expensive - for cancer, psychiatric treatment, and other costly illnesses, six protected drug classes in all, accounting for around one-third of drug coverage under Medicare Part D.

Trump’s touted US/Mexico/Canada Agreement (USMCA - NAFTA 2.0) is a corporate coup d’etat, written by and agreed to by lawyers representing their interests.

It’s all about prioritizing profits and other interests at the expense of workers, consumers, and ecosanity in the three countries.

It also assures steadily higher drug prices. Over 70 US health, consumer, and other public interest groups denounced NAFTA 2.0 for permitting higher prices.

Representing millions of ordinary Americans, they launched a campaign to remove monopoly protections for drug giants in the so-called US/Mexico/Canada agreement.

They demand giveaways to Big Pharma end, wanting drug prices lowered, not raised. They slammed USMCA terms that “lock in place existing US policies that have led to high medicine prices, undermining the authority of this and future Congresses to implement important reforms to expand generic and biosimilar competition, lower medicine prices and expand access.”

The new agreement is worse than original NAFTA by granting drug companies monopoly rights to facilitate high prices, permitting them to go steadily higher, including by avoiding competition from generics.

Millions of Americans forgo using expensive drugs because they’re unaffordable. Dozens of groups petitioned Congress by letter to demand that USMCA provisions “undermin(ing) affordable access to medicines” be stricken from the measure when voted on by House and Senate measures.

“With consumer anger mounting, Big Pharma aims to use NAFTA 2.0 to lock in the government-granted monopolies that give drug corporations their power to price gouge consumers in the United States and around the world.”

“The idea was to sneak a provision into the trade deal that would prevent the United States, Canada or Mexico from reducing monopoly terms in their domestic law for cancer and other important medicines.”

“But here’s the bad news for Big Pharma: Congress is aware of the pharmaceutical corporations’ sneaky effort to lock in high drug prices using NAFTA 2.0, and if those terms are not eliminated, it’s hard to imagine how a deal gets through Congress.”

US President Donald Trump’s top foreign policy advisor John Bolton appears dead set on resuming his decades-long stand-off with Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega, hinting that Washington-backed regime change may be in the offing.

“The Ortega regime has sentenced three farm leaders to 550 years in prison for their roles in protests in 2018, where Ortega’s police forces reportedly killed 300 activists. As President Trump said Monday, Ortega’s days are numbered and the Nicaraguan people will soon be free,” the national security advisor to the US president tweeted on Wednesday. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"> <p dir="ltr" lang="en">The Ortega regime has sentenced three farm leaders to 550 years in prison for their roles in protests in 2018, where Ortega’s police forces reportedly killed 300 activists. As President Trump said Monday, Ortega’s days are numbered and the Nicaraguan people will soon be free.</p> — John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) February 20, 2019[/size][/quote]

The Central American nation has been rocked by unrest since April last year, with protesters demanding the resignation of Sandinista party leader Ortega, who has been president since 2007, and convincingly won another five-year term in 2016.

The US has repeatedly backed the uprising against the left-wing government, and last November Bolton made a keynote speech calling for the “crumbling” of what he called the “Troika of Tyranny” – Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba – saying the states represented a “a sordid cradle of communism in the Western hemisphere.”

On Monday, Trump name-checked the same three countries, saying their "great potential" would be unlocked with the collapse of socialism. To expedite the process, Congress last year imposed financial measures that would make it difficult for the economically-stricken Nicaragua to obtain international loans, as well as slapping sanctions on top officials in Managua.'

'The US House of Representatives has voted to block Donald Trump’s emergency declaration in a major rebuke for the president’s effort to build a wall along the US-Mexico border.

The measure will now go before the Senate, where a handful of Republicans could side with Democrats to send the measure to Mr Trump’s desk, and force him to sign the first veto of his presidency. Mr Trump made the emergency declaration just under two weeks ago, after Congress agreed to a government funding bill that explicitly left out funding for the border project. That deal averted a second damaging government shutdown in as many months after the president forced what became the longest such closure in US history starting in late December.

Since the emergency declaration announcement, Mr Trump has found critics on both sides of the aisle.

Democrats have raised a range of concerns, and have referred to Mr Trump’s move as an “end run” around Congress, which is constitutionally mandated to approve spending in the federal government.

“This is about the Constitution of the United States,” House speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Monday during a news conference. “It’s not about politics, it’s not about partisanship. It’s about patriotism.”'

'Donald Trump once said black Americans were too stupid to vote for him, the US president’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen has claimed in explosive testimony to Congress.

Mr Cohen alleged that Mr Trump once travelled through a struggling Chicago neighbourhood and commented that “only black people could live that way”.

He also called his former boss a “racist”, a “conman” and a “cheat” in written evidence submitted to a congressional committee ahead of his hearing which was obtained by Politico.

Mr Cohen, an attorney and ‘fixer’ to Mr Trump for a decade before turning on him after becoming the target of a criminal investigation, makes a string of other damning claims in the testimony. The allegations sent the White House into defence mode and threatened to overshadow Mr Trump’s meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at a summit in Vietnam.

Mr Trump tweeted from Hanoi:

Michael Cohen was one of many lawyers who represented me (unfortunately). He had other clients also. He was just disbarred by the State Supreme Court for lying & fraud. He did bad things unrelated to Trump. He is lying in order to reduce his prison time. Using Crooked’s lawyer!

Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, said on Tuesday: “Disgraced felon Michael Cohen is going to prison for lying to Congress and making other false statements.

“Sadly, he will go before Congress this week and we can expect more of the same. It’s laughable that anyone would take a convicted liar like Cohen at his word, and pathetic to see him given yet another opportunity to spread his lies.”

Earlier this month, Trump picked Bill Barr, an attorney general under President George H.W. Bush, as his replacement for Jeff Sessions. Two of his recent hires for the White House counsel’s office, Mike Purpura and Pat Philpin, served under President George W. Bush. They will report to the new White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, who served in the elder Bush’s Justice Department.

Meanwhile, the newly confirmed deputy secretary of the Treasury Department, Justin Muzinich, worked on Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign and helped draft his tax plan. Trump’s pick to run the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Heath Tarbert, served as an associate counsel to George W. Bush — a fact unmentioned in a recent White House announcement of his nomination. Jim Jeffrey, a former senior aide in George W. Bush’s White House, became Trump's U.S. special representative to Syria in August.

And then there’s Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh — a former George W. Bush White House aide who liked Bush so much he later served as his personal lawyer.

President Trump on Monday will propose major spending cuts across a range of domestic government programs while seeking a large increase for the Pentagon, a budget plan that’s already encountering withering opposition from Democrats who control the House, as well as some Republicans.

Reading this, you might think Democrats and a few “moderate” Republicans are responding to the demands of the people, nearly half of them on the dole in one form or another, not because they are shiftless deadbeats, but because the Federal Reserve and the bankster elite have destroyed the economy and corporations have shipped decent paying jobs overseas and robotized many at home. This has resulted in about a third of the US population falling or remaining in poverty while most of the rest live paycheck to paycheck. Only the “one precent” benefit from the windfall of a rigged economy. In 2015, candidate Trump promised to reinvigorate the economy and bring the troops home from long stays (occupations) in foreign lands and wind-down the outrageously expensive wars. Trump at the time was taking money and advice from Israel-firsters, most notoriously the Zionist casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson and the professional Islamophobe Frank Gaffney.

In addition, he was taking foreign policy advice from Joseph E. Schmitz, a former Inspector General of the Department of Defense and a former executive with Blackwater Worldwide. Schmitz fled the Pentagon after he was accused of protecting top Bush officials accused of wrongdoing.

Add the presence of Walid Phares, who is associated with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a neocon central organization that teamed up with the American Enterprise Institute and the Hudson Institute to propagandize the American people into supporting the illegal invasion of Iraq and supporting a fallacious war on terror. Prior the 2016 election, I wrote about this process of neoconization in a small ebook, Donald Trump and the War on Islam.

In other words, Trump was a neocon simpatico well before he was elected. However, it took seasoned establishment neocons such as John Bolton, Elliot Abrams, and Mike Pompeo to make the conversion complete. The Donald has his moments—publicly stating he will remove troops from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan—but on that point he is betrayed time after time by his handlers.

MAGA is now shorthand for neocon. The MAGA theology is dedicated to war abroad—predicated on long-standing lies and falsifications—and austerity at home with an attendant police state apparatus to frighten and control the mob. Social programs are to be looted, the money handed over to the Pentagon so it might continue building a “new generation” of nuclear weapons, taunting nuke-armed Russia and China, engaging with myriad intelligence agencies (in collusion with the State Department and its subversive NGOs) to undermine elections and kickstart wars, and feeding an already obese Pentagon and its associated industries.

The richest man in the world’s newspaper didn’t mention the real reason Democrats are upset with Trump. If social programs are slashed and billions of dollars diverted to the war pigs, bedrock Democrat voters will demand socialism, socialist candidates, and a centrally planned economy with plenty of debt dollars to feed and house the plebs.

Democrats are also war pigs. They are just better at PR and presentation than chest-thumping neocons who cut to the chase. At the end of the day, the path both follow leads to the same destination: endless war in the name of an unsustainable and bankrupt empire.

'The US president visited an Alabama town devastated by a deadly tornado, where he paid his respects to those who died in the natural disaster, as well as… signed Bibles, delivering Twitter a conniption fit.

The president met with relatives of the storm victims, as hundreds of people congregated at a local Baptist church in hopes of shaking Trump’s hand, or even better, getting him to autograph their Bibles. In fact, the Bible owners were apparently happy with their unique memorabilia after Trump signed a couple of them, but Twitter users had a slightly different take on the act.

For the first time, Trump wrote in the letter to Vucic what is the key to relations with Pristina: He officially mentioned the mutual recognition

US President congratulated Vucic on Statehood Day

On the occasion of the Statehood Day of the Republic of Serbia, the President of the Republic of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, received congratulations from numerous world officials, stated the Cooperation Service with the media of the President of the Republic.

Serbia celebrates the statehood day: The award ceremony at the Presidency (PHOTO)

In the message of the President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, states:

- Dear Mr. President,

On behalf of the American people, I am pleased to send sincere congratulations on the occasion of the Statehood Day of Serbia.

This year, since the celebration of the hundred anniversary since the Serbian flag fluttered over the White House, we are starting to ensure that the next century of our partnership is in a similar way dedicated to peace, prosperity, and freedom.

The United States remains unwavering in its support to your commitment to deepen regional co-operation, and in particular to your efforts to normalize relations with Kosovo.

While it is up to the sides to achieve agreement they can both support, we consider that mutual recognition should be a central motive of permanent normalization of relations.

Such a historic agreement, with mutual recognition in its essence, would build the way for the goals of Serbia's Eurointegration and economic growth - said President Trump's congratulations.

Foto: Tanjug/AP

President Vucic received congratulations from other European officials, including Turkish President Rexhep Tayyip Erdogan, President of the Republic of France Emmanuel Macron, Federal Republic of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmeier, President of the Republic of Austria Alexander Van der Bellen, President of the Republic of Italy Sergio Mattarella, President of the Swiss Confederation Ueli Maurer, President of the Republic of Bulgaria Rumen Radev, President of the Republic of Greece Prokopis Pavlopoulos, President of the Czech Republic Milos Zeman, President of Hungary János Áder, President of the Republic of Croatia Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic, President of the Republic of Slovenia Borut Pahor, President of the Republic of Finland Sauli Niinistö, Georgia President Salome Zourabichvili, President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins, British Queen Elizabeth II, King of Sweden Karl Gustav XVI, King of Belgium Philippe and Captains Regents od San Marino Mirko Tomassoni and Luca Santolini.

President of the United Nations, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and the UAE Vice President and Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum congratulated President Vucic on the Statehood Day, wishing the citizens of the Republic of Serbia plenty of progress and prosperity under the wise led by President Vucic.

The congratulations were also sent by the Japanese Emperor Akihito, the President of the Republic of India Ram Nath Kovind, the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, the President and the Prime Minister of the Republic of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev and Bakytzhan Sagintayev, as well as the President of the Parliament of that country Nurlan Nigmatulin, the President of the Republic of Armenia Armen Sarkissian, Egypt Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, President of the Democratic People's Republic of Algeria Abdelaziz Bouteflika, President and Prime Minister of the Republic of Iraq Barham Salih and Adil Abd Al-Mahdi, Moroccan King Mohamed VI, President of the Republic of Korea Moon Jae-in, President of the Supreme People's Assembly DNR Korea Kim Jong Nam President of the State Council and Ministers of the Republic of Cuba Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermudes, President of the Republic of South Africa Sir Cyril Ramaphosa, King of Thailand Maha Vajiralongkorn, President of the People's Republic of Bangladesh Abdul Hamid and Australian Governor Peter Cosgrove, the statement said.

A high-ranking U.S. envoy has urged Serbia and Kosovo to stop provoking each other and to resume their discussions over how to normalize relations between the two former wartime foes.Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale, who met with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, also called Friday on Kosovo to lift a 100-percent tariff on Serbian goods so that European Union-mediated talks can resume.The call came a day after Kosovo's Parliament adopted a negotiating platform for the talks that involves mutual recognition and keeping the current borders intact...

'US President Donald Trump says he would gain 98 percent of the vote if he ran for Israeli prime ministerial vote.

Speaking at a closed meeting with Republican Party donors at Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence, Trump pointed to his rare popularity among the Israelis.

He cited his controversial decision to recognize Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel's “capital” and relocate the US embassy to the city as the reasons for his support base.

Jerusalem al-Quds remains at the core of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, with Palestinians hoping that the eastern part of the city would eventually serve as the capital of their future independent state.

The businessman-turned-president, however, seems to be taking his trade war to Israel. According to Bloomberg, US trade negotiators will be visiting Israel this week to discuss upgrading the existing agricultural trade pacts and reducing tariffs for American farm exports to Israel.

Under the existing deal, virtually any product produced in Israel that can be competitive in the US market, can enter the US duty-free.

In contrast, US products continue to face high tariffs in many sectors limiting their access to the Israeli market, according to a 2018 report from the US Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service.'

'Germany can forget about getting as much intelligence from US spooks as it currently does if it allows Chinese telecoms to build 5G infrastructure, a letter from the American ambassador in Berlin has reportedly warned.

Washington is continuing to twist the arms of its European allies to discourage economic cooperation with its biggest geopolitical rival, China. According to the Wall Street Journal, US Ambassador Richard A. Grenell sent a letter to the German economy minister, which said that Berlin should discriminate against Chinese companies like Huawei when selecting providers of 5G equipment to upgrade its networks. Ignoring the warning may result in the US downgrading its intelligence-sharing cooperation with Germany, the letter dated last Friday said. American intelligence agencies like the NSA are an essential source of information for their German counterparts, which operate under stricter regulations in relation to spying, especially domestically.

Washington considers Chinese companies to be a potential threat, presuming that any equipment and software provided by them could potentially be used by Beijing to spy on other nations. Huawei and ZTE already face restrictions on the American domestic market, while US officials are leaning on other nations to exclude China from the lucrative upgrade of wireless infrastructure to 5G standard.

Commenting on the report, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lu Kang said Washington should accept the fact that other countries may take strategic decisions independently, as is their right. Beijing sees US attacks on Chinese telecom giants as baseless scaremongering and a not-so-subtle way of undermining a competitor through political leverage and legal attacks.

Berlin said that the US failed to provide any evidence that Chinese products would pose a security threat, adding it was willing to use them as long as they comply with Germany’s recently reviewed cybersecurity standards.'

'The US Senate has once again rebuked President Donald Trump for his policy toward Riyadh by approving a resolution that would put an end to Washington’s support for the Saudi-led coalition in the devastating war it has waged on Yemen since 2015.

The Republican-led Senate passed the resolution on Wednesday by a 54 to 46 tally, seeking to halt any US military involvement in the conflict, including providing targeting support for Saudi airstrikes, without authorization from Congress.

Introduced by Senators Bernie Sanders, Mike Lee and Chris Murphy, the resolution will scale back the US role in and American military assistance for Saudi war on Yemen ahead of the fourth anniversary of the day when the Saudi-led coalition started its campaign against the impoverished nation.

The text now heads to the Democrat-led House of Representatives, which is expected to overwhelmingly pass the measure, possibly this month.'

President Donald Trump began his Sunday morning venting about 'Saturday Night Live,' complaining the show should be investigated by federal regulators for mocking him but not Democrats.

The president complained their treatment of him was 'like an advertisement without consequences' and a boost to help Democrats.

'It's truly incredible that shows like Saturday Night Live, not funny/no talent, can spend all of their time knocking the same person (me), over & over, without so much of a mention of 'the other side.' Like an advertisement without consequences. Same with Late Night Shows,' he wrote on Twitter.

And he added: 'Should Federal Election Commission and/or FCC look into this? There must be Collusion with the Democrats and, of course, Russia! Such one sided media coverage, most of it Fake News. Hard to believe I won and am winning. Approval Rating 52%, 93% with Republicans. Sorry! #MAGA'

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"Castles made of sand, slips into the sea, eventually." - Jimi Hendrix

For the first time, Trump wrote in the letter to Vucic what is the key to relations with Pristina: He officially mentioned the mutual recognition

US President congratulated Vucic on Statehood Day

On the occasion of the Statehood Day of the Republic of Serbia, the President of the Republic of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, received congratulations from numerous world officials, stated the Cooperation Service with the media of the President of the Republic.

Serbia celebrates the statehood day: The award ceremony at the Presidency (PHOTO)

In the message of the President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, states:

- Dear Mr. President,

On behalf of the American people, I am pleased to send sincere congratulations on the occasion of the Statehood Day of Serbia.

This year, since the celebration of the hundred anniversary since the Serbian flag fluttered over the White House, we are starting to ensure that the next century of our partnership is in a similar way dedicated to peace, prosperity, and freedom.

The United States remains unwavering in its support to your commitment to deepen regional co-operation, and in particular to your efforts to normalize relations with Kosovo.

While it is up to the sides to achieve agreement they can both support, we consider that mutual recognition should be a central motive of permanent normalization of relations.

Such a historic agreement, with mutual recognition in its essence, would build the way for the goals of Serbia's Eurointegration and economic growth - said President Trump's congratulations.

Foto: Tanjug/AP

President Vucic received congratulations from other European officials, including Turkish President Rexhep Tayyip Erdogan, President of the Republic of France Emmanuel Macron, Federal Republic of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmeier, President of the Republic of Austria Alexander Van der Bellen, President of the Republic of Italy Sergio Mattarella, President of the Swiss Confederation Ueli Maurer, President of the Republic of Bulgaria Rumen Radev, President of the Republic of Greece Prokopis Pavlopoulos, President of the Czech Republic Milos Zeman, President of Hungary János Áder, President of the Republic of Croatia Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic, President of the Republic of Slovenia Borut Pahor, President of the Republic of Finland Sauli Niinistö, Georgia President Salome Zourabichvili, President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins, British Queen Elizabeth II, King of Sweden Karl Gustav XVI, King of Belgium Philippe and Captains Regents od San Marino Mirko Tomassoni and Luca Santolini.

President of the United Nations, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and the UAE Vice President and Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum congratulated President Vucic on the Statehood Day, wishing the citizens of the Republic of Serbia plenty of progress and prosperity under the wise led by President Vucic.

The congratulations were also sent by the Japanese Emperor Akihito, the President of the Republic of India Ram Nath Kovind, the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, the President and the Prime Minister of the Republic of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev and Bakytzhan Sagintayev, as well as the President of the Parliament of that country Nurlan Nigmatulin, the President of the Republic of Armenia Armen Sarkissian, Egypt Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, President of the Democratic People's Republic of Algeria Abdelaziz Bouteflika, President and Prime Minister of the Republic of Iraq Barham Salih and Adil Abd Al-Mahdi, Moroccan King Mohamed VI, President of the Republic of Korea Moon Jae-in, President of the Supreme People's Assembly DNR Korea Kim Jong Nam President of the State Council and Ministers of the Republic of Cuba Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermudes, President of the Republic of South Africa Sir Cyril Ramaphosa, King of Thailand Maha Vajiralongkorn, President of the People's Republic of Bangladesh Abdul Hamid and Australian Governor Peter Cosgrove, the statement said.

'Right now, Donald Trump could start a nuclear war on a whim, and no one could stop him.

Under any circumstances, the prospect of nuclear war is terrifying, the deadly consequences irreversible. Yet with a single order, the president — any president — could effectively declare a nuclear war that would wipe out entire nations, including our own.

More worrying still, our current president has shown an alarming willingness to engage in aggression instead of diplomacy — particularly towards nations like Iran and China, as well as countries whose citizens have now been banned from traveling to the U.S. under an overbroad, dog-whistle executive order.

Trump has almost gleefully exercised his right to threaten nuclear war. He made boastful remarks about nuclear might throughout his campaign. And just recently, he called for a new push to put America at the “top of the pack” when it comes to nuclear weapons capability (as though we weren’t already).

Going against decades of precedent, not to mention hard-won diplomatic treaties reached with countries like Russia and Iran, Trump has enthusiastically declared that we should expand, not reduce, our nuclear arsenal.

Already, just a tiny amount of our nuclear stockpile would be enough to blow up the world several times over. We’d probably even have enough left over to decimate most of the seven Earth-like planets in the Trappist-1 solar system that NASA recently discovered.

Surely the horrors at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the devastation after the nuclear power plant leak at Fukushima, should warn us against the danger of nuclear fallout. The disaster at Three Mile Island wasn’t exactly a small lab accident, either.

It’s almost impossible to comprehend millions of people being obliterated from the face of the earth simultaneously, in the blink of an eye. Especially at the whim of just one American who happens to have access to a certain red button.

That’s why Representative Ted Lieu and Senator Ed Markey have introduced legislation prohibiting the sitting president from unilaterally declaring nuclear war without a prior act of Congress. They call it the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2017.'